Value in social shares
Now that I addressed some surface issues I will focus on the underlying idea: information’s value can be measured by social shares.
That basic idea is true. People share what they like, despite the ever popular disclaimer “rt≠endorsements” I’ll bet a vast majority of what those people share are, if not endorsements, they are articles of interest and articles the initial reader enjoyed and deliberately decided to pass along.
If I am looking at the news and want to know what people are talking about and presumably care about I might start with a Twitter search for key words and phrases. Possible searches could be #DC (my city), or #News or #Obama. The results page Twitter displays does not show a traditional feed with all results, instead it defaults to a “top” results, a filtered page.
Twitter’s filtered page shows me popular individuals talking about this topic and the most shared tweets on this topic. It decides what is valuable based on a social sharing algorithm. Twitter is deciding what is valuable based on the number of social shares for that unique piece of content, and presumably other similar content shared by the same user in the past and other non-related content shared by the same user and his or her network.
Assessing value through social shares in this way can be tricky, one good post can boost value and a large, disparate inconsequential network can have a similar affect. Whereas a smaller, tight-knit group of followers could provide more social value to you as an individual but that might not be reflected in a search or in the general spread of information through algorithmically determined social networks.
How does Ed share what he cares about? There is no sorting algorithm standing between him and anybody he wants to target with his message. It is also a decidedly low-tech approach.
Mister Ed corralled the neighborhood boys into delivering his hoof-pressed messaged. I’m betting that beyond knocking on a few doors little social sharing occurred. in 2014 parlance: that tweet from @MisterEd received 0 retweets and 0 favorites.
Realistically, outside the limited world of talking (and reading) horses the content had little value so it received no shares. No shares, no value. If a horse could operate a printing press, I am confident we can find one that can send a tweet. Now all we need to do is find someone that will bring back a Mister Ed spinoff to see it happen. Netflix? Amazon?